Frances Latham

Frances Latham
Born	baptized 15 February 1609/10 Kempston, Bedfordshire, England
Died	September 1677 Newport, Rhode Island
Resting place	Common Burying Ground
Other names	Frances Dungan Frances Clarke Frances Vaughan
Occupation	Colonial wife and "Mother of Governors"
Spouse(s)	(1) William Dungan (2) Jeremy Clarke (3) Rev. William Vaughan
Children	(surname Dungan): Barbara, William, Frances, Thomas; (surname Clarke): Walter, Mary, Jeremiah, Latham, Weston, James, Sarah
Parent(s)	Lewis and Elizabeth Latham

Frances Latham (1610 - 1677), was a colonial American woman who settled in Rhode Island, and is known as "the Mother of Governors." Having been widowed twice, she had three husbands, and became the ancestor of at least ten governors and three deputy/lieutenant governors, and is related by marriage to an additional six governors and one deputy governor.

Born in Bedfordshire, England, she was the daughter of Lewis Latham, a falconer for King Charles I. She was first married to William Dungan, with whom she had four children. Dungan died at an early age, and she soon married Jeremy Clarke who brought her and her Dungan children to New England where they settled in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Clarke was a prominent merchant who became the President of the colony for a year. With Clarke, Frances had seven children, the oldest of whom, Walter, later became a governor of the colony.

Jeremy Clarke died when all of his children were still minors, after which Frances married her third husband, the Reverend William Vaughan of Newport. Frances and her last husband both died at about the same time in 1677 in Newport, and Frances was buried in the Common Burying Ground there. She leaves a legacy of thousands of descendants, many of whom reached great prominence during their lives.

Baptized in Kempston, Bedfordshire, England on 15 February 1609/10, Frances Latham was the daughter of Lewis Latham and his wife Elizabeth. Her father, born about 1584 in Elstow, Bedfordshire, was a Sergeant Falconer under King Charles I.

Frances' first husband was William Dungan, who was a perfumer living in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, now a part of London. With Dungan she had four children, but he died in 1636, being buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 20 September of that year, leaving a will with Frances as executrix, and naming each of his four minor children. Within two years she was remarried, this time to Jeremy Clarke of London, a nephew of Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland. Soon thereafter the couple immigrated to New England with Frances' four young children, and in 1638 Jeremy was admitted as an inhabitant of Aquidneck Island (Portsmouth) in what soon became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Following turmoil in the government of the island in 1639, her husband was one of the nine signers of an agreement to form the settlement of Newport at the south end of the island. He held a number of important positions in the town and colonial government, and in 1648 became President of the entire colony, serving for a year in this role. Clarke died in January 1652, with his death being recorded later in the Friends' (Quaker) records. He was buried in the "tomb that stands by the street by the water side in Newport," now lost, but his governor's grave medallion is in the Clifton Burying Ground where several Quaker Rhode Island colonial governors were later buried.

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